‘cial services organisations: ran on coffee. In one place ‘where I worked, we used to drink the most awful instant stuff until there was a proposal that ‘we buy a filter machine to provide good quality coffee. ‘The staff meeting was instantly locked in battle — the only time they ever debated anything with vigour. ‘Where should the machine be sited? Downstairs, where the instant mak- ings were currently situated? This, ‘then, would discriminate against upstairs, who, new intelligence dis- closed, had their own kettle. Ah yes, but some of them drank tea, so they ‘would need the kettle anyway. But if the others, because of this, only had instant, upstairs coffee” drinkers would be disadvantaged in relation to downstairs, who would have filter. Conflict was joined about the cleaning and setting-up of the ‘machine, With instant, people could make their own and’ wash up. A large-scale filter device would mean ‘that one person would serve several others, Equal opportunities policy raised its head. Would the result be that men would abdicate their responsibility, leaving women to takean excessive share of this chore? Evidence of current behaviour was that they left all their washing up until more fastidious women did it for them anyway. Perhaps, it was argued, the upstairs-downstairs dispute would bbe resolved by buying two machines. But this would increase the likeli- hhood that cleaning and setting-up sexism would arise. Anyway, what about the cost? ‘Attention swung to meetings. Cur- rently, instant coffee was provided in vacuum flasks for pouring into sec- fond-best quality china. Could not pump-action flasks be provided to ‘ease this work? At last, an instant decision — we would buy them. Justa minute, would this not pre-empt a decision on the filter machines? We would buy another of those for ‘meetings. ‘Three filter machines! A consid- erable capital investment. And run ning costs would be higher. Perhaps (this was a voluntary agency) we should consult the management com- ‘mittee about what kind of coffee they wanted at their meetings. "The management committee, used to meatier fare, had an intensive review of the situation and referred it Pure gold Café society, we are told, is flourishing in Britain once again. Malcolm Payne looks at the difficulties behind getting a decent coffee. back to the staff meeting. Covert sex- iam was a big issue here. Who was clearing and washing up the second best quality china? It was revealed that junior female staif undertook this task, while senior male staff ser viced the meeting. Tn the end, we bought better quality instant, and the second-best quality china wasrelegated in favour of plastic cups which nobody had to ‘wash up. Who emptied all those plas- tie cups out of the waste-bins? ‘By this time I'd also found out that coffee was bad for me. I was faced with my personal dependence at a training course I chaired. The speaker on drug abuse started with tobacco ~ I sat smugly, a life-long non-smoker, Alcohol? Merely a tiny tippler. Then, he went on to— heroin? cocaine? marijuana? No — caffeine. Ttotted up my intake. Hight cups of the strong stuffa day —a heavy user. Liver damage, stomach ulcers ete. My wife acted instantly. Onto the Cafe Hag. T lasted two days of withdrawal ‘symptoms, then went back on it. For- anately, the office was right behind ‘me, One of the clinchers in the great coffee debate was that if you had the strong better-tasting stuff, you would drink less of it than the ‘weaker tasteless instant. I like it; I don’t believe it; but I like it. So now ve got my own filter machine in the office. You've got to die somehow. Twell remember one day back in. the power cuts during the miners’ strike when I was a social worker. Several of us le home before the power came on (no coffee) and the only alternative was to find a client ina zone ofthe city that had the power ‘on and do a cadging home visit. My selection only had strong tea. Such are the deprivations of a social worker’s life. Thank God I'm now in management. Everywhere I go fora meeting, the coffee is brought ‘out as soon as we arrive. I've become quite an Egon Ronay of varying provision, ‘There's one place I go for meetings that has Maxpax in tea, black and white coffee, chocolate and orange ‘and lemon squash slung in self-dis- pensers. around a permanently sshshshing cauldron in the corner of the committee room. There's one place where I'm renowned for having ‘smashed their delicate pump-action ‘vacuum flask on my first visit. One anti-racist place told me that [should ‘say with and without milk instead of white and black. Check out which colour of the universal cheap earth- fenware institutional tea sets (that everyone has) is extant in this par- ticular office. We have jasmine ~ what's yours? Really old-fashioned organisations have only tea in the afternoons, Up-to-the-minute ones have caffee all day long. One of the problems of joint plan- ning with the health service is the total failure of these new general ‘managers, with all this power and instant decision-making, to get hos- pital catering departments to provide anything but the old-fash- joned stuff made with milk. There they are, organising multi-million pound projects, and they're all moan- ing because they can’t get the coo" » to come up with the real stulf. recommend housing associations. Tve never known one that didn’t have full-strength real coffee con- stantly bubbling and instantly avail- able, I suspect that this is the covert reason why so much joint planning for care in the community ends up using ordinary housing. Nothing about all this normalisation busi- ness, It’s simply that all the health and social services planners know ‘that they can go down to their local housing association and always be absolutely sure of getting a decent cup of the wet brown stuff. . ‘Malcolm Payne is assistant director (development) at The Richmond Fellowship Social Services Insight, August 21,1987,Yours zl significantly... Unravelling the symbolism behind organisation logos took all the imagination Malcolm Payne could muster "ve just been to a National Schizophrenia Fellowship con- ference, and I see they've got a new logo. It's of four figures like the most flabby wraiths from Ghost busters dancing roundin acirele with their hands not quite touching. ‘Actually, it reminds me of a witches’ coven. I have this image of director Judy Weleminsky and chair Nicholas Lines MBE prancing devil- ishly in the nude at dead of night. I wonder why they have tohavea logo. Ofcourse, if Lasked I'm sure I would be told that it conveys the ineffable essence of the organisation. Ttean be quite hard to tell whatthe point is of many ofthe logos you see. ‘Mental Health the other day. Their logo is two gunsights side by side. ‘What are they aiming at? Shooting down all the bad practices, or helping usall to target what we're doing bet- ter? Or perhaps they're just taking a pot at Mind's ascending dove. Obviously some logos are profes- sionally designed, like the RNIB's very clever white stick man on a graded background, Others look as though some worthy doodled them on the back of an envelope at the first committee meeting. ADSS is one of these: the initial letters are formed into the three sides of a cube. Bit of a ‘square organisation, perhaps? Now that social workers are get- ting hard to find, the job ads are becoming more and more desperate, and the logos are increasingly daz~ aling. After intensive study, I have divided them into several categories. ‘The first is those who are keeping to the old-fashioned simplicity of writing out their names. Usually, of course, this is not enough, and the lettering is chosen tobe specially dis- tinctive, Northumberland, for exam- pile, seems to be back in the days of Allfred the Great. Bromley is trendily informal on a scribble. Avon's format demonstrates that they understand joined-up writing in Wally Harbert’s department. Another doodler at ‘Sandwell has filled in all the letters, One step up from this isto use the traditional heraldry associated with the authority. Maurice Hawker's crew of pirates in Essex is armed with scimitars. Lancashire, of course, has a rose, and anyone who's, had a letter from them will know it's Social Services Insight, July 81,1987‘tasteful crimson. Their Polytechnic got in before the Labour Party, but their stemmed and leafy version is backed by the feint lines of an exer- cise book — a constant reminder to staff to keep the publication rate high. Cambridgeshire has a sort of ‘spacehopper, and Suffolk's rising sun Tooks as though they've set fire to their shield. ‘But rescue is at hand, because Suf- folk also has a triad of high-stepping shire horses to stamp out the blaze. Animals are another favourite PRS TCL A ‘theme. Hertfordshire has a rampant stag which nowadays is ‘growing with the community.’ Better be care- ful on the southern stretches of the ML. Bucks has a chained albatross, Liverpool a liver bird and Cornwall, some sort of starling. Wiltshire’s bird on the notepaper, but not in the ads, is flapping its wings. There are lots of ions and mythical beasts. War- ‘wickshire has a dancing bear, which, I discovered when I visited recently, they actually have stuffed in a corner. Nature is apparently an important ‘theme to those authorities who hope to attract staff by the charms oftheir living environment. Still with the birds, Dumfries and Galloway have some sort of waterfowl rising from a lake with pine trees in the middle distance. Hillingdon has three humps (doubtless reflecting their ‘committee system). One is probably ‘trees, and one of the hills has a cam- panileon the top todemonstrate good time-keeping. Coventry actually goes furthest with a discreetly misty version of Lady Godiva au naturel side-saddle on a horse. Perhaps the most sophisticated is Cumbria’s ‘green hills reflected in limpid lakes. Water is obviously a good staff attraction. One of the most confusing. is Greenwich, whose strange angularities have puzzled me for years, But looking at a map recently, Trealised that they might be a styl ised version of the river in their part of the world, Presumably the Thames barrier has straightened out some of the kinks. Further up the river in Kingston, their representation ofthe ‘Thames is distinctly choppy. It’s a life on the ocean wave in Devon on their Blue Peter style galleon. I've come to the conclusion that Tam Social Services Insight, July $1, 1987 side's zig-2ags hanging creeper like from the top of the ads is also a river, although T' like to think it's a repre- sentation of the rain sheeting down in Ashton-under-Lyne. ‘Trees are favourite natural fea ture. I take it that Nottingham's healthy sprig of what looks like holly inside the nis Sherwood Forest, and not the prickly tendencies of their renowned 13th century sheriff. E ing has a charmingly chubby arboreal specimen, well-clothed. in foliage ~ no reflection on Jef Smith, Tmure, Waltham Forest has amore stylised version, but it has @ sub- structure of branches which don't extend very far - lack of support there? Actually, neither ofthese bor- oughs has tome a verdant image. At Teast Barnet is more honest. Its trees are bordered by a thumping great dual carriageway. ‘Some other urban authorities have given up the battle as far as present- ing life there as a rural idyl is eo cerned. Instead, they offer the challenge of meeting inner city deprivation. Wolverhampton has gone the furthest down this road, With a depressing panorama of total dereliction. Croydon’s collection of multi-storey office blocks obviously came from the inspiration of looking fut of the window. The Slough divi- sion of Berkshire tries to overcome the popular industrial image with the overlay of a bent seragey tree ~ probably all that will grow there. Bradford's multi-racial handshake and Birmingham Jewish Board's interlocked thumbs are typical of ‘caring hands in logos, a common symbol. Another frequent image is of a house, but often given a touch of deeper significance. The Richmond Fellowship’s brown splodge in its house presumably reflects the murky Freudian base of therapeutic com- munity theory. Some authorities are clearly unsure that potential applicants are even likely to know where they are. ‘Two Scottish councils, Strathclyde and Grampian, both "demonstrate this suspicion ‘of sassenach igno- ance. Norfolk has recently joined them, but they also have a hand underneath to catch anything that falls out. The most impressive ofthis, category is Sefton. They have abit of heraldry, a snatch of river, then two big arrows homing in on a circle approximating to Merseyside. ‘Some of the most intriguing logos ‘are the abstract ones designed to con vey the underlying nature of their work. The University of Kent's four square dots is, perhaps, to Sow iat uy rear n uncover never-ending knowledge if only they're given a big enough ‘grant. Or pethaps it reflects the way their lecturers tail off in mid-sen- tence. I've often been tickled by the Cheshire Foundation’s feather, but my favourite is Birmingham which shows what it thinks of us all with a big fat 'v-sign, ‘Skipping the old-fashioned style of, interweaving letters of the name (wittiest: Bradford; most boring: ‘Nisw — weak 20 years ago, but still unchanged), the final category is peo- ple. Brent nowadays has a multi- fovexcalzcs | racial hug in its ads, Barnardos’ squashed children and FSU’s sil- houetted foursome (standard family there) are typical. Norwood Child Care and Mencap both go for appeal- ing child faces, The prize-winning Liverpool Personal Service Society runs the risk of over-reaching itself; its crowded logo covers just about every form of deprivation you could ‘think of, My favourite in this cate- gory is Friends of the Elderly. Their stylised helping symbol well befits an organisation whose subtitle is ‘Gen- tlefolk’s Help.’It looks like Sir Jasper tilting back a comely wench ready for the rape. ‘My nomination for the best logo of all ig Lincolnshire which seems to hhave made a pact with a one-legged devil. Perhaps he called in to be reg- istered handicapped and was offered job as departmental mascot. Malcolm Payne is head of applied ‘community studies, Manchester Polytechnic